In Beijing’s Olympic Park, a stone’s throw from the celebrated Bird’s Nest Stadium, sits the headquarters of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Modeled on northern China’s traditional courtyard abodes, each of the five interlocking buildings feature staggered indoor oases, meandering skywalks and a glass-topped central atrium that helps naturally regulate the inner climate. A 200-ton boulder from China’s sacred Taishan mountain occupies pride of place in the entranceway, signifying, say the architects’ notes, strong foundations, growth and stability.
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They’re surroundings that encapsulate AIIB President Jin Liqun’s favorite mantra of “lean, clean, and green.” After serving as the institution’s founding president from 2015, Jin was reelected to a second term in 2020. Over Jin’s decade in charge, the AIIB has helped finance 343 projects across 39 countries at a cost of $66 billion, focusing on green infrastructure (the AIIB has never funded a single coal project nor even secondary coal-related infrastructure, such as roads or railways to coal mines or coal-fire powerplants.)
Born in the eastern city of Suzhou two years before Mao Zedong’s Communist Revolution, Jin was “sent down” to help rural peasantry as a young man—briefly becoming one of the feared Red Guards during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution—and spent his teens farming paddy rice, wheat and cotton in the parched countryside. When China’s universities eventually reopened, Jin was first in the queue and, after a short time working as a teacher, he moved to Washington D.C. in 1980 as a Chinese representative to the World Bank.
On Jan. 16, now aged 76, Jin hands over AIIB’s leadership to his successor, Zou Jiayi, a former Chinese Vice Finance Minister, who also had senior roles within the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB). TIME spoke to Jin about his legacy, shifting infrastructure needs, and the future of the institution he has shaped from its birth.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You’ve achieved a great deal over the past 10 years. What do you want your legacy to be?
That we have set up a bank with recognized governance standards and international best practice. This is the achievement of the senior management members under the guidance of the board and with the support of all the staff. So when we look at these past 10 years, we should think the basic principle, the basic model, also branding of this institution, is sound and we need to stay the course. But as for the strategy, it’s always evolving, and we have to believe that the next generation of leadership of this bank and the next beyond will be smarter, more intelligent, and they can do better.
Looking back at your tenure, is there anything that you wish you’d done differently?
I don’t think there would be major differences if I were to start all over again. Because we focused on investment in infrastructure and other productive sectors to improve the livelihood of the people and to deal with climate change and to lift the people out of poverty. We do not work directly for poverty reduction; rather, we build infrastructure investment to pave the path for sustainable development so that poor people have the means to make a living on their own. That’s our philosophy and it turns out to be quite effective.
Multilateral development banks [MDB] traditionally funded roads, ports, and power plants. Now we’re moving into a new age of technology and a new industrial revolution. Should MDBs finance compute power, physical AI, and these kinds of things?
We do not interpret infrastructure in a very narrow, conservative way. Infrastructure is defined as the means to build up and sustain growth and create jobs. For instance, roads, railways, and all these facilities help the private sector to thrive. So if we take this as the basic approach to develop, then we have to accept digital infrastructure.
AI is all the rage. So many countries are competing to gain the beachhead of AI. But quite a lot of countries have no capacity to do this [and may be] left way behind by this new wave of industrialization. There could be some reshuffling in the status of countries in this world. We would have “AI developed” countries and “AI developing” countries. Some developing countries might move to “AI developed” countries; some now advanced economies may slip into the “AI-developing” countries. So my view is we are obligated to provide critical support to low-income countries so that they won’t struggle.
So many countries are very keen on developing data centers, but we don’t need a data center in every place. We need to select the right place and also we should try to provide green electricity to sustain those data centers.
There’s much debate whether AI is going to augment the industrial base or is a displacement technology that leads to joblessness. How are you sure that funding AI projects and data centers is going to be positive?
We as a development bank are trying to be innovative, trying to provide critical support to our members which need that kind of help, so that they can also move faster on the curve toward a higher level [of development.] On AI, governments must have their own incentive to deal with the challenge, to prepare for the future. I don’t think that they should take things lying down: “We are poor, we are low income, so in the new era we definitely will be the loser.” They should not think that way, they should not act that way, and our job is to help them to develop now.
But what is the implication for developing countries? In the 1980s, 1990s, China depended very much on low-cost labor, and later on some of these sectors moved out of China to Vietnam and some other countries—a cascading transfer of the sectors from relatively richer countries to poorer countries, mostly because of competitive labor costs. Now, I don’t think it is easy for many countries to compete based on labor cost [because of AI.]
Some people laugh at U.S. efforts to reshore manufacturing. I say that’s wrong. Reshoring is happening. Because robots can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Robots do not unionize. They will not go on strike. So cars will roll out of assembly lines in Detroit as they did back 70, 80 years ago. This is not an illusion. It’s happening. That means to continue to compete based on labor costs will probably not work.
AI is one of the key fissures in Great Power competition today. Is that problematic from your perspective in terms of financing and building infrastructure which is geopolitically sensitive?
If you talk about competition between the United States or China, it’s all right that these two countries could compete. But the fallout, unfortunately, would be on the less developed countries. In terms of AI, they will depend heavily on the technology these countries developed. Now my view is, how can we respond to this, to help the low-income countries when their labor competitiveness will not help them that much in the future?
There’s obviously a huge need for infrastructure across the Global South. Does recent nativism in the U.S., spotlighted by January’s dismantling of USAID, mean that your mission statement has swelled?
Over the last seven or eight decades, the U.S. has been a major player in international economic finance. And I don’t think the Americans would just give that up. I think the American people generally still want the U.S. to play an important role. And to my knowledge, there’s no intention whatsoever for the U.S. to pull out of the WTO [or] the United Nations.
The recent meeting between President Xi and President Trump was very positive. This means that when you sit down and talk to each other, some problems will be resolved. And I tend to see some very optimistic parts when a lot of people are so pessimistic. So it’s very important for all countries to stay engaged.
As a multilateral development bank, we’ll continue to work with the World Bank, ADB, to cofinance development projects. There might be some differences in his narrative, but I think to push for growth is fine. To push for job creation is good. To promote energy security is good—but of course, what is meant by energy security? Certainly, different people may have different interpretations. But if the World Bank adjusts its mandate to focus on infrastructure and projects for growth, then I think they would have more projects to cofinance with us moving forward.
There’s been a lot of focus recently about the debt burden on nations of the Global South. The average African nation spends about 18% of GDP on interest, compared to just 3% in the E.U. Do you think more can be done by MDBs to try to help countries in the Global South restructure debt and make low interest finance easier to come by?
I started working in the World Bank in 1980, the year when Mexico’s debt problems broke out. And throughout the ’80s, lots of Latin countries had debt problems, which have never really stopped. On many international forums, I have heard people talking about how we can provide financial resources to help these countries? But few questions to my knowledge were raised as to how these debt problems have occurred.
Starting from the ’70s, Latin American countries borrowed not to invest. They borrowed to consume, to sustain living standards without creating new wealth. That was really the problem. And many other countries, because of political instability, borrowed money and the government changed, and those projects which were financed by the previous government were not taken care of. My view is we should help highly indebted countries to learn to use the money more cost-effectively, put the money in the right place, and deal with corruption problems. Unless we deal with that, it will be futile for us to keep pumping money into an economy. So this is a fundamental issue. I’m sorry to see that little attention was made to the source.
You’ve always prided yourself on the independence of the AIIB, which is something you still highlight in speeches. Are you annoyed or frustrated by the fact that 10 years on many Western governments remain skeptical about the independence of the institution?
Skepticism is probably something you will never be able to dispel. But I’m not worried, because I think most people have come to recognize that we are serious in managing this bank by the highest possible standards. We adhere to the high level of governance. We have so far been very much successful because we have worked together based on collective wisdom and making decisions collectively. The decision making is democratic. I do not force our management members to do something which they don’t think is the right course of action.
Back in 2023, AIIB global communications chief Bob Pickard resigned very publicly while making allegations of a toxic culture and that the Chinese Communist Party controlled the bank. What do you make of the fact that Canada, two years on, hasn’t resumed its membership?
Canada suspended its engagement with the bank and we immediately organized an investigation group. Canada also announced that they would make an investigation into this case and would publish the outcome in two weeks. They never published the outcome of their investigation, and, to my knowledge, Bob Pickard never turned over any piece of evidence suggesting that this bank is dominated by the Chinese Communist Party. We have the board making decisions. I am the only Chinese [national] on the executive committee, which makes decisions.
Your internal review into the incident was completed in just three weeks, which seems extremely quick. Could anything have been done differently to reassure your members and the wider world?
Bob Pickard taught us a lesson when we recruit people that we should do more background checking. So we had a lesson.
You will soon hand over the presidency to Madam Zou. What qualities does she bring to the role?
She must be given some time to explore some new approaches to development. And I think right after she takes over, she will probably keep this bank going on along the charted road. But then, because situations change, our clients’ demands will change, and the bank will need to adjust. And this is going to be her job. I cannot predict what is going to happen, what’s going to be done, but I’m sure the bank will be agile and adaptive, and it will fit into situations moving forward.
What is your personal plan? Are you going to help in a supervisory or consultative role?
I don’t think it’s the right idea. Once I step down on Jan. 15, I’m not going to say anything or do anything which could be interpreted as interference with the management. It’s not appropriate. I have other fish to fry!
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